


Gravity Con

by Queen_Mab



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2018-12-06 17:40:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11605614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queen_Mab/pseuds/Queen_Mab
Summary: It's 2017, and the Stan twins only recently got back in touch after ten years of radio silence and various misadventures. As an attempt to get back to normalcy, they attend a con together.Between crushes, magic, and cosplayers, it doesn't end up normal.





	1. Chapter 1

“Yeesh, look at all these losers.”

“Stanley, we’re one of them.”

“Yeah, but still, look at ‘em.”

The convention was vast and sprawled in every direction, full to the brim with merchandise stands, displays, signs pointing towards competitions and panels, and of course, people. Tall people, short people, thin people, fat people, people in costume and people laden with posters and plushes—frankly, it was probably more people stuffed in one spot than either man had seen.

“Huh. How many folks make costumes for these things?” Stan stared down someone who had somehow managed to turn themselves into a demon with many limbs, prosthetic face pieces, and glowing eyes. “I could make that. Doesn’t look too hard.”

“Stop gawking at the cosplayers. That’s not why we’re here.” Ford dove into the crowd, weaving between people. Stanley had a different style. He just muscled nerds out of the way if they wouldn’t move.

“Right, right. We’ll get to your nerd game, don’t worry.” Stanley peered over the head of a teenage girl (he… thought?) wearing a tutu and so much makeup that she looked porcelain. “You think Shermy’s boy would like something from here?”

“You can look at the Alley after we get to the tournament.”

Ford had to fight the urge to leave Stan behind as he continued to slow and check out the wares of various stalls. “Look at this stuff. The jewelry is all plastic.”

“I swear, Stanley, if you get us kicked out because you’re stealing from the vendors…”

“Nah, not worth it. Now pickpocketing? This place is a gold mine for that.”

“I don’t care who you’re stealing from. If you’re kicked out, you get to drive yourself back to Gravity Falls.”

“Someone’s cranky.”

Ford rolled his eyes, but he kept marching to his goal: the Sorcery: the Conference card game tournament.

The chaos at the tournament was a little more organized than the rest of the convention. Lines of people registering coiled around the room, but once they were registered, everyone was given a name tag and placed at tables facing off with their opponent. In the registration line, everyone shuffled their deck over and over despite the fact that the deck would be shuffled by a moderator before the matches began. Stan looked positively nauseated by the whole thing.

“Do I have to watch a bunch of sweaty nerds play cards all day?” he asked.

“I’m not forcing you to stay,” Ford said, but Stan just grumbled some more without actually moving to leave. Things were still a little awkward between them, only just recently getting in touch after ten years of radio silence, but Ford still knew his brother like the back of his hand and he knew Stan wouldn’t pass up a chance to spend time together.

Registration was quick and easy after the line, and as Ford sat down quietly across from a college-aged boy, there was a sudden crash from the table next to him. Ford expected to see that someone had accidentally overturned it, but instead, there was a woman slamming her deck down with force that very nearly collapsed the table.

“‘Sup, nerd.” The woman’s grin was white and sharp as she slouched down into her seat, staring down the man twice her size on the other side of the table. “You ready to get creamed?”

Her opponent snickered, shaking his head as he crossed his arms.

“You’ll be laughing all the way out of here when I beat your ass,” she said, leaning back in her seat like this was her world and everyone else just lived in it. Her opponent kept snickering, like she wasn’t even worthy of a response, but her grin was too sharp to not take her seriously. It was like a person might cut themselves on the edge if they weren’t careful.

Stan was standing at the sidelines, looking supremely bored as the moderators started the game. Ford watched the woman next to him out of the corner of his eye, and it was obvious he wasn’t the only one. She was one of only a few women in the competition, and spectators crowded around her table. Beating the college boy was easy enough for Ford—college kids always overestimated their skills—and then the woman won at the table next to him, jumping up from the table and crowing her victory. “Suck it!”

“Don’t stare, Sixer. You’re going to creep her out,” Stan muttered to Ford as he moved on to another table, and Ford flushed, abruptly staring at his deck instead of at the woman.

It was easy to work through the competitors, and slowly but surely, the constant background noise of the woman’s trash talk blended into the chatter of players and onlookers… until it was Ford’s turn to play her.

She was pretty—very pretty—but Ford was a grown man in his thirties, not a drooling teenager. He kept his eyes on the decks as moderators shuffled them.

“Are you contemplating my inevitable victory?”

Ford glanced briefly at her face. She was still grinning, dark eyes soft with the beginning of crow’s feet at the edges, her cornrow braids tied with brightly colored beads. The tag on her chest said ‘Grace’. Ford looked back at the cards.

“Come on. You’re not even going to trash talk a little?” she asked as the moderators passed their decks back to them.

“Some people need to trash talk, and some people are good enough to let their cards do the trashing for them,” Ford said, and he didn’t realize how bad that sounded before she let out a laugh, bright and loud.

“Okay, okay, that was good. Nice comeback.”

Ford wasn’t a teenager, so he was adamantly _not_ beginning to blush like an idiot. Stanley, damn him to hell, began to snicker off on the sidelines. The moderator flipped a coin, deciding who went first, and the game began.

A crowd was beginning to gather again at her side, but she made a shooing motion. “Don’t any of you have someone else to stare at?”

“The crowd seems to be following you around,” Ford said, not moving his eyes from the game.

“They act like a woman playing cards is a zoo animal.” She glared at some of the straggling onlookers. “Yeah, I’m talking about you.”

“We should give them a show.” He sacrificed multiple mana and put down a titan, pushing it forward with a smirk. “I hope you have something good, or I’m taking this match.”

“I always have something good.” She sacrificed a creature and multiple mana herself, putting down a titan of her own with sharp edges at her grin.

What were the odds that they’d both have titans in their hand? He’d have to know how many titans were in her deck to calculate that, but the odds were likely low.

“You’re glaring at the cards. Starting to feel the pressure?” she asked, still grinning with those sharp edges.

“Are you trying to distract me so I’ll slip up?” he asked, playing more mana.

“Is it working?”

Ford smiled despite himself, glancing up at her briefly, only just noticing the familiar winged W on her shirt. “You’re a comics fan?”

Internally, Ford winced. ‘You’re a comics fan’? That had nothing to do with anything. The W was on her chest. What if she thought he was staring at her chest? He was an idiot and should just focus on the game.

“Now who’s trying to distract who?” She didn’t seem to mind and balanced her head on her fist, staring down at the game. “I’ve been a Wonder Woman fan since the 80s. You?”

He didn’t dare look up at her again. He kept his focus on the cards, but her fingers were spread out on the table next to her deck and her nails were painted with intricate, lovely swirls of color. How did girls do that? “I was more a Marvel kid.” Ford considered his cards, trying not to stare too long at her nail art. It was made with the careful precision of a scientist, but the colors of an artist, and he wondered what other things she could create. “I haven’t had much time to read comics recently.”

“What about the movies? You got time for those?”

“Not really. I’m busy with work.”

“What do you do?”

Somehow, ‘I hunt for paranormal creatures and nearly end the world due to a floating Illuminati symbol before narrowly foiling the plan by calling my criminal brother, getting experimental surgery on my skull, and breaking my life’s work’ didn’t sound like the sort of thing he should just come out and say. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“That’s what they all say. You work retail, don’t you?”

“I’d never work retail. It’s a breeding ground for urban gremlins. They feed on despair.”

Her laugh shook the table and almost made him drop his cards. Instinctively, he drew the cards tighter to his chest, staring at her suspiciously, but her laughter was genuine and the corners of her eyes were crinkled and when was the last time he’d made a girl _laugh?_

“Now I know you’ve worked retail.”

Ford didn’t really have a response to that because he was too busy wondering what on Earth he’d said that she found so funny, so he buried his face in his cards and focused on the game.

* * *

Ford was hopeless.

Stan could only stand to watch his brother fumble around a pretty girl for an hour (why were these games so damn long) before getting bored. Had Ford just never talked to a woman before in his life? Stan hadn’t been around for the last ten years, but surely Ford hadn’t made it to thirty without a single girlfriend?

If it came to it, Stan would get the girl’s number himself and foist it on Ford after some intense coaching lessons. Lord knew that his brother was hopeless otherwise.

But in the meantime, Stan couldn’t stand the spectacle anymore and he was worried that the smell of nerd sweat would seep into his clothes if he stayed squished in the sidelines, so he shuffled his way out of the tournament room back into the crush of the merchandise stalls.

Honestly, he had to hand it to the nerds—they were good at making costumes. A papier-mâché skeleton with one blue LED eye brushed past him, walking behind a cyclops with a purple ponytail that somehow managed to see where she was going. Maybe Stan could talk Shermy into letting him take the boy out to one of these things and they could make costumes together.

Stan swept the hall for some merchandise his nephew would like—the kid liked that show about colorful dancing alien women, so maybe they’d have some coloring books or something.

Except no one had coloring books. Everyone had cheap jewelry, stuffed plushes, body pillows, and drawings that were definitely not child appropriate. On second thought, maybe Stan shouldn’t take his nephew to a place like this.

Somehow Stan found himself pushed and jostled in front of a stall overflowing with body pillows of reclining preteen-looking anime girls. All the girls looked like they were about to cry. “Eugh.” Stan shuddered, recoiling physically from the pillows before grimacing at the stall owner, a man with a mullet about twenty years out of date. “This is what you do with your time?”

“A paycheck is a paycheck,” said the man, and if that wasn’t the voice of an adult who’d lost control over their life, Stan didn’t know what was.

“Rob a bank. At least you can have some self-respect that way.”

The artist sighed, glaring at him. “If you’re not interested, I’m not keeping you.” A man with ragged yellow hair brushed past Stan, and the artist immediately brightened. “Hey, man, you want another Sakura pillow? I know you like Sakura.”

“I don’t need a third pillow.” The man’s forehead was beaded with sweat. He was clutching a file to his chest like it had the meaning of life folded inside. His eyes were shining, and something in his grin put Stan immediately on edge. “I have a picture from the original manga artist himself! I’ll have my waifu for real!”

“Your what now?” But the man was already weaving through the crowd, leaving behind the scent of sweat and obsession.

Stan hadn’t run around the jungles of Colombia, ducking the government and the FARC, without learning to trust his instinct. His instinct was ringing a million warning bells in his head right about now. It was the sort of warning bell that told him that something bad was going to happen and he should leave quickly, but he could hardly leave without his brother, and he could hardly expect Ford to back out of his stupid tournament on a gut feeling. With a soft curse, Stan dove into the crowd after the man, shoving his hands into his pockets and side-stepping between superheroes, anime folk, and video game characters.

The man stepped into a restroom with a large ‘out of order’ sign taped on. Stanley did his best not to look at all self-conscious as he caught the door with his foot. No one would question him if he just looked like he knew what he was doing.

(He really hoped he wasn’t about to walk into something that would scar him for life.)

The man with the file didn’t even notice that the door hadn’t closed behind him. Stan bit his tongue to keep quiet. The entire bathroom was covered in spray-painted symbols and dotted with candles, and at the center of the chaos, the man fell to the floor kneeling, opening up the file and worshipfully holding up a pencil sketch of a smiling anime girl.

The tiles on the bathroom walls rippled, like something was alive under them. The air was charged, humming like Ford’s basement did back when he had that world-ending portal.

Stan let the door close. He had no idea what weird magic stuff was going on, but he knew the one guy qualified to deal with it.

“Out of my way, nerds!” He shoved people out of the way, making a beeline for the tournament. Was the charged magic feeling spreading? He hoped it wasn’t. There were way too many people here.

Ford was still playing that random woman. Stan slamming his hand on the table got their attention quickly. “Ford, some guy is doing weirdo magic spells in the bathroom.”

“What?”

“Uh.” The woman frowned at Stan. “Is that a euphemism for something?”

“No. There was magic mojo symbols and candles and moving walls and everything. Ford, I got a bad feeling.”

Ford rubbed his temples, glaring at Stan, probably because Stan interrupted his game of ‘look anywhere except the pretty woman’. “You don’t think this could wait until after—”

The floor shook. The lights flickered. The air smelled like sulfur and a hush fell over the tournament.

Stan hissed a curse between his teeth. “No, I don’t think this can wait.”


	2. Chapter 2

The benefit of specialization (or overspecialization, if Stanley were to be believed) was that Ford had dealt with magic enough that he knew exactly when the next wave was coming. While everyone else was glancing around the hall with whispered questions, Ford gathered his cards.

“Wait, are you forfeiting?” the woman—Grace—asked, sounding as though she were trying to goad him when really she was too distracted by the flickering lights and sudden smell of brimstone.

“Get away from the table.” Ford swept his eyes across the tournament and cursed, raising his voice. “Everyone, away from the tables!”

Some people—the smart ones—scurried from the tables immediately, but others just glared at him, as if asking them to abandon their games were tantamount to asking them to abandon their children.

“Come on, you nerds can play later.” Stan reached for Grace’s cards, but she swatted his hands with a glare.

“No messing with my deck.”

“Listen, lady, my brother has a PhD in stuff like this so you should seriously—”

Heat erupted from the ground and sulfur choked the air. The spell was coming.

“Get down!” Ford dropped next to the wall, shielding his head. Stan dropped. Grace dropped a hair too late—the table flew up and knocked her jaw. She had only just grabbed her face when the table fell to the ground, cards fluttering like snow before erupting into trees.

The hall broke into screaming and scrambling, but cards flying everywhere spewed trees, islands, plains, swamps, mountains, and monsters. The wooden floor cracked as firs slammed through and twisted upwards until they could have been a thousand years old. The ceiling shattered, raining wood splinters on five different biomes slapped together.

“What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck…”

When it was safe enough for Ford to stand, he was standing in the middle of a forest with Grace and Stan. Grace paced around the roots of the tree that was once their table, each root as thick as her waist. A bruise was already blooming across her jaw, and Ford internally winced at the sight. “What the  _ fuck _ just happened?”

“A spell, if I were to guess. Powerful, but not very skillful.” Ford tapped his fingers to his chin as he looked up the trees, attempting to eyeball their height. He wished he had brought his journal, but the whole point of going to this convention was to reconnect with the world outside of his research and revive his involvement with non-anomalous hobbies, so he was stuck taking mental notes until he got his hands on a pen and some paper. That was assuming, of course, they lived long enough to get pen and paper, because in his experience, stuff like this usually involved a lot of mortal danger. Stan could probably handle it, but Ford had no idea how much experience Grace had with fighting. Likely little to none.

“I saw some weirdo in the bathroom doing weird shit with one of those Japanese drawings,” Stan said as he straightened and brushed himself off. Mercifully, he looked entirely unharmed.

“What do you mean by ‘weird shit?’” Grace said, ceasing her frantic pacing to turn on Stan, putting her hands to her hips. The beads in her braids clicked together with the motion, her mouth twisted into a scowl. She was still pretty when she was angry. (Ford told his internal monologue to shut up, because now really wasn’t the time.)

“I told you. Magic symbols on the wall and crap.”

“You have to be more specific when you say some guy does weird shit in a bathroom with a picture. My head went somewhere else.”

Ford was about to tell them both to shut up because he was trying to think, but he was cut off by screaming and a crash. Something was pulling down the trees. Something huge.

A familiar creature, massive with moss growing from its skin, wicked horns and a long beard, with its greenish hands clasped on a club, tore a nearby tree right out of its roots and threw it across the room with a roar, hitting something screaming deep in the swamps. The hole left behind a swift drop into the basement, teeming with things crawling in the dark and devouring the water boiler. Ford backed up away from the beast, away from the hole, instinctively moving his arm to push Grace back, but she stepped away before he could, like she didn’t even notice him.

“Is that a forest titan?” Grace whispered. At first, Ford thought she was afraid, but when he glanced at her face, her eyes were wide with reverence, her hands clasped as if in prayer. “ _ Badass. _ ”

“I think the spell brought the cards to life. We need to get out of the tournament hall and find the man responsible for this spell.” Ford patted his jacket, then cursed under his breath. “And of course I don’t have my gun.”

“You were the one moaning about following the con’s rules, not me.” Stan shoved his hands down his pants. Ford recoiled, but Stan just pulled out a small gun. “Here you go. Never say I did nothing for you.”

“Stanley—” Ford took the gun gingerly, trying not to think about where it had been. “Why did you smuggle a gun into the convention?”

“Because you never know when the cartel will get you.” Stan dug a switchblade out of his pockets, holding it out to Grace. “I got a pair of dusters, so you can take the knife.”

“Uh.” She took the hilt of the knife between her thumb and forefinger, letting it dangle as she glanced at Ford. “Your brother’s pretty well armed.”

“Best not to question it unless you want a melodramatic story about Colombian jungles,” Ford muttered as he checked how many bullets were in the gun. At this point, he wasn’t even surprised.

“Nah, if you want interesting stories, you should ask my brother Ford, here. He’s the one who deals with magic mojo like this all the time.”

It wasn’t like Stanley to deflect attention, but Ford didn’t have time to question it before Grace was looking at him. He did his best to not blush, because now was really not the time. “So you know how to deal with this?”

“Know is a strong word.” Ford kept a tight grip on his gun as he gestured for them to follow him, edging away from the forest titan, which was still uprooting trees, towards the water of the island. “Our chances of death are quite high.”

Stan shot Ford a glare, and only then did it occur to Ford that that may not have been the best thing to say to someone who probably had no experience in situations like this, but Grace only gave a shaky sigh through her nose.

“Well, if I die, at least I’ll die in a super awesome way,” she said, backing up to the edge of the water with them.

“That you will.” That was also probably not the best thing to say. Ford should really just never speak to women.

Ford raised his gun as the fir trees gave way to a pebble beach and the lap of shore. The water rippled with creatures lurking in the deep, and not far away was a rocky island piled high with cursing competitors, all of which were throwing rocks into the water to scare off any water monsters that were getting a little too close.

The forest titan took a step forward, ground shaking under its mossy feet. Grace waved her knife in its general direction, then looked at the blade with a grimace.

“I don’t think this is going to work. I say we go now.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” said Ford as he edged around the water, though Stan stuck closer to the forest and ducked between the trees like he was born among them. Who would have thought ten years on the run would have turned a Jersey boy into a jungle man?

The shore was slippery, and it melted into a swamp with great twisting tree roots that sunk into water, which wasn’t going to be any easier to navigate. If they could just find the plains—

The forest titan roared and ripped one of the great swamp trees out of the water, spattering mud over all three of them and shaking the ground. They dropped to the floor, covering their heads as the titan threw the tree at the mountain that towered in the middle of the hall. The mountain trembled, massive rocks falling down into the lake and trees below.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go—” There was no telling who was talking, because they were all suddenly stumbling into the swamp, water sloshing around their hips.

There something with scales and teeth in the deep. It lunged.

“Shit shit shit!” Grace lashed out, slashing at the beast just as Ford fired his gun. It still sailed into Ford’s thigh, but the jaws had gone slack and it fell into the water streaming black blood.

“Blood in the water. Not good. Come on!” Stan waded further through the swamp. The feather-light touches of  _ something _ under the water brushed Ford’s ankles.

“Better not be fantasy piranhas. Or leeches. Or snakes,” Grace said, her words unspooling until they were just a list of vaguely swamp-related creatures that could be found in the water. For a moment, Ford was concerned she was working herself up to a panic, but as she kept listing off animals, her voice eased, her fingers steadying as she counted off more animals on her hands. “Or alligators. Or crocodiles. Or hippos.”

“Hippos don’t live in swamps,” Ford said, doing his best to ignore the tickle of something under the water. Plant life? Harmless fish? Dangerous predator? No, better to focus on Grace’s face. She had a pretty face, after all. Her eyes were dark and expressive, bright with restrained fear.

“No, but they live in lakes, and that’s a lake over there,” Grace said, waving her lovely arm at the lake bordering the swamp. “Did you know that hippos kill more people each year than lions, leopards, elephants, and rhinos combined?”

“Aren’t hippos those big fat animals with the big rock teeth?” Stan asked, continuing to wade ahead. He was the calmest of either of them, seeming more annoyed than afraid. Maybe Ford should have listened more closely to those stories from Colombia.

“Why would they kill so many people?” Ford asked, because talking about hippos couldn’t be worse than wading through hazardous water in silence. Especially talking about hippos with  _ her. _

“They’re really, really territorial,” said Grace. “Nature doesn’t fuck around with territorial animals.”

“Centaurs are territorial. They also have a terrible sense of humor,” said Ford. “If they catch humans in their habitat, they tie them up and leave them in stables to be walked like pets. Personally, I’d prefer the hippos.”

“Centaurs?” Grace looked at him oddly, and Ford rolled his eyes even as a flush touched his ears, gesturing to the swamp they were wading through.

“I want you to look around and ask yourself if that’s what you should be skeptical of.”

“Touché.” Grace looked down at the water with the face of a woman forced to accept the complete breakdown of everything she thought was true. Given the situation, Ford thought she was taking it quite well. “Have you ever seen a unicorn?”

“You don’t want to meet a unicorn.” Ford pulled a face at the memory of the Lisa Frank monstrosities. “They’re terrible animals who will bray about pure hearts until you go away.”

“Maybe your heart just isn’t pure enough. You ever think of that?” Grace’s smile might have been convincing if she weren’t still rigid and eyeing the water like a monster might rise at any moment and devour her. Which, to be fair, was exactly what might happen. “I want to meet a unicorn.”

“If you want to meet one, be my guest. You find them in enchanted glens after some Druidic chanting.”

“You say that like we all know where an enchanted glen is.”

“Come to Gravity Falls. I have one behind my house.”

Grace snickered, sounding almost normal. “Are you inviting me to your house?”

Blood rushed to Ford’s face. An invisible hand tied his throat into a little bow. Why did he open his big mouth? “Uh…”

Something in the water splashed. Stan grimaced, eyeing the rippling surface. Then he was pulled under.

“Stanley!” Ford grabbed blindly at the water. His fingers snagged on something slick and slimy and covered in barbs.

He yanked it upwards. It surfaced, thrashing, barbs tearing into his skin, and then Stanley was up again, the beast attached to his hip.

“Die die die!” Stanley punched the beast in the face over and over. Grace stabbed it everywhere, snagging her fingers on the barbs. Who was shouting? Maybe all of them.

Grace sliced its mouth off with one ragged stab, and the beast twisted, bleeding and dangling from its barbs wedged in Ford’s skin, and he could only fling it far away with all his strength.

“Land! Over there!” Stan flailed his hand towards the sliver of grassy plains visible between the trees, but his and Ford’s blood was already dripping into the water, darkening the muddy surface to red.

The only warning Ford had was the feather-light brushes of fins.

And then teeth.

Ford and Stan cursed, tearing multicolored fish away as they waded as fast as possible for the plains, Grace ripping as many off them as she could.

“I was joking about fantasy piranhas I was joking about fantasy piranhas—” Grace chucked the bloody fish into the lake, where they were swallowed by some much bigger fish in the deep. They were close, they were almost there, almost to dry land—

And then they lunged for the plains as one.

The swamp ended as abruptly as it began, with a border so clean that it could only be magic, without any water seeping into the dirt of the plains. The various fish hanging onto Ford and Stan’s legs refused to let go.

“Do either of you have a first aid kit?” Grace grimaced as she grabbed one of the fish flopping uselessly on Ford’s elbow, squeezing just behind its mouth until it was forced to let go and she could throw it back into the swamp. Ford rubbed his elbow, mumbling a thank you as he went to work on another fish on his knee.

“What do you take me for? The Red Cross?” Stan pulled off the fish from his own legs, wincing every time he just tore them off without forcing them to open their mouths.

“You’ve got three different weapons for a convention, but you don’t have a roll of bandages?”

“What are you going to use a roll of bandages for? Throw it at people?” Stan threw the last of the fish into the water. “We bleed out like men!”

Grace leaned towards Ford, a little too close, and now really wasn’t a convenient time to be blushing. “I think your brother might be an idiot.”

“I can confirm that he is,” Ford said, avoiding looking at her face too closely, and the flush in his cheeks just got worse as she laughed.

“Oh my God.” She flopped on her back, her braids fanning out around her head like a dark halo as she grinned at the ceiling, which had stopped raining woodchips and plaster. It had settled into pieces divided by trees and at least one mountain. “I can’t believe we just walked through magic piranha water and lived.”

Ford should have said something. Maybe something clever, but his tongue was twisting until he couldn’t quite use it anymore.

Stan had the most obnoxious smile on his face as he looked at Ford, but then the smile instantly disappeared. “We might be celebrating early.”

Ford and Grace followed his eyes deeper into the plains, where a rhino in full siege armor was glaring at them, scratching the ground and lowering its head.

Grace hissed between her teeth. “Fuck.” 


	3. Chapter 3

The rhino charged.

Ford rolled away. Grace and Stan went the opposite direction. He got to his feet just as the rhino made a sharp turn, one brick-like foot sinking at the edge of the plains and the marsh, and it faced Stan and Grace.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck. Everyone was yelling, Stan and Grace were running, but it wasn’t going to be enough, they were fleeing a rhino for God’s sake. Ford unloaded his gun into its backside, but all the bullets ricocheted, hitting the grass and the water and the swamp trees and it was about to charge—

“Hiiiii _ ya! _ ”

A streak of bluish white spear flew through the air and pierced the rhino’s armor. It reeled back, one leg sinking into the swamp with a squelch.

Off balance, it snorted and tossed its head, scrabbling for purchase in the piranha-infested water. Another spear arced through the air. It hit the rhino between the eyes.

The rhino slid into the swamp, still as it sank into the muck. Grace and Stan were on the other side, frozen with their weapons out as they watched it devoured by the water.

Ford slowly turned his eyes towards where the spears had come from. A woman in a tutu, bluish pale with a white rock fixed on her forehead, dusted off her hands with a grimace. “Well, that takes care of that.” She put her hands on her hips, arching one eyebrow. “I don’t suppose any of you humans saw any gems pass by here?”

Grace erupted into sudden heaving laughs. Ford jumped in surprise, glancing her over for signs of physical trauma, but then Stan started laughing too. The woman with a rock in her head did not seem to like that.

“My nephew would get such a kick out of this,” Stan said, wiping tears from his eyes, and the rock woman crossed her arms with a scowl.

“ _ What _ is so funny?” she snapped.

“Nothing, nothing, it’s just…” Grace was talking now, barely able to breathe between her laughs, and they were just as loud and boisterous as they were during the tournament. Ford privately admired how she was still laughing through all this. “Wow, it’s been a crazy day.”

“Did you see any gems or not?” the rock woman snapped again, tapping her foot on the grass. She was wearing ballet shoes. Who wore ballet shoes outside of a dance studio? Was she a cosplayer? And where did the spears come from?

“No, it’s just cards come to life in here,” Grace said, flapping her arms at the world around them. One of the rhino’s bones floated to the swamp’s surface, picked completely clean. “And, what, did cartoons come alive outside the tournament hall?”

“ _ Everything _ came to life here,” the rock woman said with an edge to her voice. Wait, what?

“Everything?” Ford looked past the rock woman across the plains towards the hall door that opened to the hustle and bustle of artist stalls. Adjusting his glasses, he could see more strange and colorful creatures spilling from the doorway, mostly human with proportions that looked alien and uncomfortable in the third dimension. It reminded him of Bill, he realized with a shiver. “This isn’t good. We have to deal with the sorcerer that did this before this spills outside.”

The ground rumbled. Something cracked, and splinters of wood and plaster rained from the ceiling. In the distance, a titan on the mountain was punching through the roof.

“Yeah, I don’t think Oregon is ready for a bunch of cartoon villains,” Grace agreed. She ran her fingers through her hair, the edge of her hysterical smile beginning to peel off.

“If you think you can fix this, then you better do it fast.” The rock woman’s rock began to glow and she pulled a new spear from her head. Ford had no idea how that worked, but he suspected she had a portal in her face. “The sooner we can all go back home, the better. I’m assuming that monster trying to break through the ceiling isn’t friendly?”

“What tipped you off?” Stan said.

“Right. I’m on it.” The woman leapt to one of the swamp tree branches, going from branch to branch like it was easy as skipping rocks, and Ford was really not going to question that now.

“What cartoon did that one come from?” Ford asked no one in particular.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Grace, her fingers fluttering at her sides as she tried to calm her breathing. He didn’t blame her for feeling a little overwhelmed right about now. “We get out of here alive, and I’ll show you.”

“I’m a man in my thirties. Should I really be watching—”

Stan gave Ford the death glare to end all death glares, but Grace just let out a choked laugh. “You’re a dude in your thirties who was just playing in a card game tournament. Don’t take yourself so seriously.” She made a motion towards the door. “Or do, and take yourself seriously while we deal with… whatever fever dream we’re having right now.”

“Believe me, it’s going to get weirder.” Ford reloaded his gun as they walked towards the door. Stan was still glaring daggers at him. If daggers made out of murder could glare daggers, that was the glare Stan was giving him. Ford did what he did best and ignored his twin.

The closer they got to the door, the more they had to fight wave after wave of colorful characters spilling out into the tournament hall. A man who looked like a comic book James Bond rip-off threw a martini glass to the ground. “ _ Damn _ it, who do I have to blow to find a good bar around here?”

“Do you have to use salty language like that?” asked a guy in a brightly colored power suit. Was that supposed to be a Power Ranger?

“I’m from an adult cartoon, you space suit wearing pansy! I can say whatever the fuck I want!” Somehow, the Bond rip off had another martini glass, which he threw right at the maybe-Power Ranger. “Now go use the power of heart or whatever to get me a G&T!”

“That’s the wrong cartoon!”

“You know, I have a lot of friends who’d be really jealous right now,” Grace said, muscling past a whole pack of small warbling yellow pill-like creatures. “They’re never going to believe me.”

“You get used to it.” Ford had to push by a girl in a Hawaiian dress, who scowled at him. Her blue dog/koala-looking companion growled, bearing needle teeth. “I’ve spent years studying weird things like this.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why study weird stuff?” Grace had to step over a whole pack of Smurfs scurrying across the plains. “Were you bitten by a werewolf or something as a kid?”

“No, of course not. Weird creatures like that are attracted to very specific spots in the world and rarely venture far.” Ford held up one hand. He’d long past grown the point when he had to hide his hands, but a part of him winced at pointing out his fingers to a woman. “I was born with anomalous hands, and it made me curious about other anomalies in our world.”

Grace’s face scrunched up as she stared at his hands. A thread of childhood insecurity coiled in his gut. Her eyebrows went up again in understanding. “Oh! You have six fingers.”

“You didn’t notice?” Ford asked. Stan rolled his eyes, but he was being unusually quiet, distracted by the waves of cartoons. “We were playing a card game for a long time.”

“I was paying attention to your cards and your face, not your hands. You think I go around counting everyone’s fingers?”

Ford glanced down at his hands. He’d always thought the extra fingers were obvious, but maybe they weren’t always the first thing people noticed.

As they finally made their way to the door, Stanley stopped and cursed, and Ford was pretty tempted to do the same. There was a reason that so many characters had been fleeing the main hall.

If the convention had been stuffed before, it was bursting now. Pastels and black and whites and jewel tones crawled over each other, some cartoonish and some looking more realistic than even real life, pushing and shoving for space in the churning mass as flying heroes plucked people from the ground to place them in the rafters and balconies. It was like relocating drops of water from the ocean—useless. Occasionally, a cackling supervillain would start blasting people, but they were quickly dogpiled and crushed by an organic mountain of protagonists.

Chunks of landscapes stolen from art and stories peppered the hall. There was a grand mountain with a swirling tower of a temple on top where technicolor ponies sat on the roofs to get away from the people; a glowing jungle climbing the edges of the hall with giant blue people dangling from branches and staring at the crowd; and a giant green metal lion sat cradled in the mass, people climbing onto its paws as a teenager tapped away on a laptop on its head.

Most obviously, there was a giant black volcano belching smoke and exuding tangible malevolence. It had punched through the ceiling, sparing the hall from suffocating to death. Now it was just casting a black cloud over Oregon, which probably wasn’t that much better.

“I think we need to go to that one,” Stan said, pointing towards the volcano. “That’s nearest the bathroom.”

“Of course we do.” Because when did the crazy sorcerers ever hide out in a pretty temple with ponies? Ford ran his fingers through his hair, grimacing as he stared down the gridlock between them and the volcano. “How are we going to get there?”

Grace chewed her lip, which was entirely too distracting for Ford’s tastes. She surveyed the hall, then her eyes lit up and she threw her arms to the sky, nearly smacking a fleeing Disney princess in the face. “The Magic School Bus!”

“What?” Ford looked up, and there it was, big and yellow with a giant face on its front, flying through the sky. Childlike glee burning with the light of a thousand old VHS tapes flared in his heart, and Grace waved her arms over and over again.

“The Magic School Bus! Hey! Down here!” Grace called, waving her arms. Ford and Stan both threw up their arms as soon as they realized what she was doing, waving and shouting to hail down the bus.

The bus beeped twice, the sound so nostalgic that Ford made a noise. It wasn’t a squeal. It was a manlier noise than that.

Ford completely ignored the Look Stanley was giving him as the bus descended. Piles of people slammed into each other to avoid being crushed by the bus, but it only hovered as the bus door opened.

“All aboard the Magic School Bus!” Ms. Frizzle called, her orange curls bouncing as she grinned and a pair of earrings shaped like the convention center dangling on either side of her smile.

Reaching the first step of the bus required a jump, but Grace practically bounded up to Ms. Frizzle. “I loved your show! You’ve been my favorite since I was little!”

“I used to watch your show every night!” Ford didn’t remember jumping up into the bus, but he was right next to Grace, and his childhood hero was smiling at him.

“I’m so glad to hear that! I love all my students, even if they weren’t in my classroom.”

Grace gave a (wonderfully adorable) squeak of delight. Stanley had to ruin it by shoving Ford and Grace to the side. “If you two are done being fangirls…” He thrust a finger at the windshield, pointing towards the black volcano. “The weirdo who did all this is probably over there. We need to get there before a bunch of cartoon villains try to take over the world or something.”

“Well, we can’t have that!” Ms. Frizzle chirped as she closed to door. “Go find your seats and buckle your seatbelts!”

That would probably prove difficult, because the bus was already full to the brim of cosplayers and cartoon characters. Mutant turtles with historically inaccurate ninja weapons were stuffed in the back, throwing balled up paper at each other. A little box-like robot bearing a shoe with a plant in it rolled up and down the walkway making sad noises. A man dressed in one of the better Sailor Moon cosplays that Ford had seen was talking with a man in a red head-to-toe costume who was throwing balled up paper back at the turtles to rev up the fight. Come to think of it, the latter could have been a cosplayer or the actual character.

Luckily, it looked like the school bus was stretching and generating more seats to accommodate the crowd.

“Hey, I see two seats over there.” Grace slid past the sad robot (giving it a little pat on the head on the way, which provoked a happy chirp) before sitting down by the window, which was smeared with something that looked like glittering fairy dust.

“And I see a seat over there!” Stan said, and he disappeared between the clumps of characters before Ford had a chance to ask him where he was going and why he was walking away from the group. Ford was distracted from chasing after his wayward brother, however, when Grace smiled at him and jerked her head towards the seat next to her.

“More space for us,” she said, so Ford decided that he could find his brother later and sat down next to her.

It would be a nightmarish flashback to grade school and sitting next to pretty girls who pressed the windows to get away from him if it weren’t for the cacophony of characters and the fact that Grace seemed at ease.

“So, you liked Magic School Bus too?” she said, showing off a flash of white teeth that only looked that much whiter in contrast with her black skin.

A part of Ford shied away from admitting it, even though he had literally been fawning over Ms. Frizzle right alongside her a few minutes ago. He swallowed the urge. “It was an early introduction to science.”

“I loved it.” Grace didn’t look out the window, even as they rose from the ground and waves of people flowed in to stand where the bus no longer hovered. She was only looking at him, and the attention made his gut twist. “I made my mom get me all the VHS tapes so I could watch it over and over. Didn’t make me too many friends.”

“Really? I’m surprised.” Ford tried to settle into his seat. It was hard to get comfortable. “The other science kids in my school avoided me because of my hands, but I would have thought you would fit in fine.”

Her scoff was immediate and loud. “Are you kidding?”

Did he say something wrong? Ford stumbled, trying to fix it, but all that came out was, “Didn’t you? You’re so…” Do not say pretty. Do not say pretty. “…Five-fingered.”

He really didn’t mean to be funny, but her laughter was so loud that it almost interrupted the spirited game of pelting turtles with paper that the rest of the bus was caught up in. Almost. For his part, Ford wished he could fling himself off the bus.

“You think the only way kids will bully you is if you have extra fingers? You think that’s the only reason nerds won’t talk to you?” Grace put her hands on her breasts. “You’ve noticed these, right?”

Desire to throw self from bus intensifying, Ford determinedly kept his eyes on her face. “Uh…”

“Nerds like their stupid boys clubs just as much as jocks. You saw how they were following me around through the whole tournament? How much worse do you think it was in high school?” She took her hands away from her breasts, thank God. “They’d always just quiz me on obscure trivia to prove I wasn’t a  _ real _ nerd and hound me to date them. And if I said that I was just there to talk science, they’d whine about how they’d never get a girlfriend because girls only like douchebags. It was awful, like somehow they’re entitled to me because we share an interest.”

Ford tried to formulate a response, but he was having trouble. He could honestly say he’d never considered how that must feel, and shame colored his cheeks as he slowly realized that he was probably that awkward, entitled boy to the few girls he had screwed up the courage to approach in high school.

Girls had always been an enigma to him. His mother had been the only one who he had ever spent much time with. In school, no one but Stanley would be his friend, and girls were the pretty creatures he fantasized about but was never allowed to touch. Even in college, his exposure to them was limited, as many of his classes were mostly men and trying to approach girls outside of an academic context was mortally terrifying.

“And that’s not even to mention what happened when people found out I had a crush on a girl! People graffitied on my locker, tripped me in the hall, passed around mean notes…”

Ford’s blood chilled.

“Ugh, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to dump this on you. We have enough problems right now without me reliving high school.” Grace shuddered, settling back against her seat. “Magic problems. Magic problems take priority.”

She was gay. Of course she was gay. It really shouldn’t matter. Ford had only known her a day and he didn’t stand a chance anyway, but he still felt like an idiot. “I’m sorry,” he blurted.

“For what?” She twisted one of her braids between her fingers. “For my sob story or for our magic problems?”

“No, for—well, for those as well, but I am sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable. I didn’t mean… I didn’t know that you liked…”

She was looking at him oddly. She hadn’t realized he had been mooning over her, and he’d just…

Yes, jumping off the bus was looking better and better.

“I’m sorry,” he said stiffly, staring at the back of the seat in front of him. Maybe if he wished for it hard enough, he’d melt into the floor. “Just pretend I didn’t say any—”

Lips were on his. Soft and dry. Then they were gone.

She sat back against the window. She watched him with a raised eyebrow, like she was waiting for his reaction.

That was unfortunate, because he was pretty sure he’d been paralyzed.

“That wasn’t… very gay of you.” As soon as the words were out, Ford could hit himself. Her teeth flashed again as she laughed.

“You’ve heard of bisexuals, right?” Grace rested her head on the window, her shoulders shaking as laughter rolled through her whole body. “For a smart guy, you’re kind of dumb, aren’t you?”

Ford could only blink. “So I’ve been told.”

The bus was rapidly approaching their destination. Ford couldn’t make his brain work, couldn’t think of a pithy response or a way to spark the conversation again.

But maybe that was okay. With a smile, he sat back and turned his eyes to the volcano ahead. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm alive! Comments, critiques, and compliments are all loved.
> 
> This was written as a commission for comicgeekery at Tumblr. I hope you enjoyed!


	4. Chapter 4

“This is your stop!” Ms. Frizzle’s cheerful voice rose above the din as the bright yellow school bus settled on the side of the black volcano with a gasp. A short way away, a crevice split into the side of the mountain glowed with the same eye-straining fluorescent light of a public bathroom. Stanley had mentioned that the sorcerer had been in the bathroom, so that was probably where to check next. Ford was pretty sure that the blackened, rocky surface of the volcano was stained by the souls of the damned, but he was in a good mood, so it didn’t bother him.

“Oh thank God.” Stan had positively disappeared for the past few minutes it took to fly the bus through the flock of generic characters with angel wings (a lot of whom had given up on flying their ground-bound friends to safety in favor of comparing wingspans), but now he was jumping to the door. “They would not stop it with the turtle puns.”

Ford decided quietly that he owed his brother a beer. A good beer. The sort of beer that haughty college-aged boys with shaggy beards and flannel could write a dissertation on.

Ford and Grace bid their childhood hero goodbye before stepping off the bus. She winked at them, her earrings mysteriously having transformed into miniature volcanoes in transit, and waved goodbye.

“Good luck with saving us all!” she trilled before pulling the bus back into the air. Mutant turtles threw more balled up pieces of paper out the window as they flew away, arguing over who threw the furthest the whole time.

"Yeesh. She couldn't put us at the top or something?" Stan grumbled, staring up at the summit belching smoke that smelled like sulfur and cartoonish villainy (which incidentally smelled a lot like more sulfur).

"On top? Why would the sorcerer be on top of the volcano?" Ford asked, his brow furrowing.

"Well, why wouldn't he be?" Stanley shook his hands vaguely at the top of the mountain, which took the opportunity to cough more smoke that billowed out and looked vaguely like howling faces before it dispersed. "I mean, that's evil bastard heaven up there. You got the atmosphere, you got the lighting, you got the drama--everything you need to look evil."

"It's also full of toxic gas and molten rock which could be well over a thousand degrees Celsius," said Ford.

"Sounds like a bad guy lair to me if I ever heard it," said Stan.

"Just because we're surrounded by cartoons doesn't mean real people are going to start acting like they're in a bad 80's show." Grace pointed towards the glowing cave. "If I could pick between a cave and the top of a volcano to work, I'd pick the cave any day."

"Fine, if you want to be boring about it," Stan said, throwing his hands up as he started to walk towards the cave.

Under normal circumstances, this sort of flippancy would irritate Ford, but Grace shot him a smile, like they were sharing a joke. Despite himself, Ford smiled back, and he let himself feel good for a moment before drawing the gun Stanley gave him. "Be ready. This sorcerer is dangerous."

The cave looked just like a cave on an evil volcano should look: like a skull. As they crept into the cave's maw, the harsh artificial lighting forced them to squint, and the stone slowly transitioned into bathroom tile.

And with the tile came an echo.

Laughter bounced off the walls. High pitched, borderline childish giggling coupled with the lower, honking tones of a man.

"Oh, Fred-chan! You're so funny!"

The tittering voice sent a shiver through each and every one of them.

"I know I am. You're so perfect, Sakura," the lower voice said. At that, Ford decided he'd much rather deal with Bill again than this.

"Ford, I want you to know that if we find anything sketchy between this dude and a cartoon, I guarantee I will vomit," Stan said, entire body drawing away from their destination like he wanted to crawl out of his skin.

"Same." Grace gagged, her lips curling back as she drew her knife with a white-knuckled grip. "Ugh. I thought my biggest problem with that kind of guy was just weird fanart."

"Tell me there isn't more than one man who wants to do this with a cartoon," Ford murmured, grimacing as they walked forward. The world had better appreciate the horrors they faced to save it.

"Ford." Grace's eyebrows shot up as she looked at him like a teacher who's just heard a student say something wildly wrong about the required reading. "Have you ever looked at fandom blogs?"

"No?"

Grace shook her head and looked at the ceiling. Ford had a feeling that he really didn't want to press her on the topic.

"Who's there?"

With the man's voice pitching high in alarm, Ford spread his legs into a solid stance and shot a glance to the others. "Be careful. He may turn our environment against us!"

Maybe the tiles would fly off the walls. Maybe the ground would open up. Maybe the ceiling would drop lava on them.

Or maybe nothing would happen.

It was a tense thirty seconds before Grace lowered her knife. "Huh."

"Don't let your guard down," said Ford, grimacing as he edged further into the cave.

"Go away!" There was no sign of magic coming to confront them, so they kept walking. "I mean it! Leave us alone!"

The tiled hallway opened up to... a disappointment.

It was just a vandalized bathroom covered in magical symbols scribbled in spray paint that left a chemical smell in the air. A bug-eyed man and a blue-haired anime schoolgirl drank tea together in the middle of a bunch of spent candles. The schoolgirl had giant, permanently dewy eyes and looked like she could have been twelve. The shudder that ran down Ford's spine was one of revulsion, not of awe. As sorcerer lairs went, it was not what he expected.

"I said go away!" The sorcerer jumped up to his feet, still holding the his teacup in shaking hands. "What are you doing here?"

"What are we doing here? What are  _you_  doing here?" Stan thrust his hands towards the blue-haired girl. "Do  _not_  tell me all this was because you wanted to screw a cartoon."

A flush rushed to the man's cheeks as sweat beaded his forehead. "We're in love."

"Oh, please." Grace's eye roll was audible, and the man winced, averting his eyes like looking in her direction burned him.

"It's true! We're in love!" the anime girl said, bouncing with the urgency of her voice. Her blue hair kept bouncing even after she stopped moving, and somehow her eyes seemed to have even less expression than before.

"We do not have time for this!" Ford rubbed his nose, pushing past the sorry excuse for a sorcerer to get a closer look at the wall. "This is the spell sustaining the chaos. Destroy the symbols and it's all over."

"No!"

The sorcerer (if he could even be called that) jumped between Ford and the wall, brandishing his teacup like it could shoot bullets rather than just splash some lukewarm tea on him.

"You can't! Do you know how long I've been working on making this spell?"

"Obviously not long enough, because you're setting a whole pack of cartoon supervillains on Oregon!"

"I'll fix it! Eventually!" The man wasn't budging, sweat glistening in the crevices of his face. "Now go away!"

"Oh for the love of..." Ford shoved the man aside before swinging the butt of his gun against the wall. Painted tiles cracked, spraying splinters of ceramic.

The scream that erupted from the man was deafening. The world shuddered. The sorcerer swung his teacup, and tea splashed across Ford's coat.

Tentacles burst from the fresh wet streaks. With a shout, Ford tore his coat off and dropped it on the ground, but the tentacles just grew, wrapping around his legs and hips and arms even as he thrashed. He struggled to shoot the coat, but the tentacles tore the gun from his hand, encasing it firmly in their suckered grip.

Stanley cursed as he body-slammed a tentacle. He nearly slammed Ford to the ground in the process.

"Sakura! Help me!" the sorcerer yelled, waving the last droplets of tea out of his teacup and accidentally peppering the ground with little suckers that looked like they were better suited for baby squids than sea monsters.

"I'm on it!" Bright light encased the anime girl as music began playing from nowhere. The light was bright enough to force Ford's eyes away, which was for the best, because suddenly she was naked.

"Shit, shit, shit..." Grace was tearing into the tentacles with her knife, but she only managed to cut through one before the anime girl suddenly had new clothes on (which had appeared from the same place the music did). The girl, now clad only in a bouncy miniskirt and a leotard, lunged with a streak of blue magic past Grace and right into Stanley's gut.

"Fuck!" Stanley hit the wall, cracking a couple more painted tiles, and the world trembled. He threw the girl off of him. She flew into the air, only to gracefully land on the ground even as the force kept her skidding backwards. She steadied herself with one hand on the ground and kicked up far more dust than was actually in the room before she came to a halt.

"Eugh." Stan grimaced at the girl. "No offence, but can you put a coat on or something before we fight? I'm just really uncomfortable getting close and personal with a preteen in a miniskirt."

"Hey!" The girl's face became bright, steaming red. "I'm over a thousand years old!"

Stan furrowed his brow. "No, you're definitely not."

The girl screamed in rage as she tackled Stan again. Ford struggled in the tentacles as the suckers pinched his skin, and Grace only sawed halfway through another before a teacup bounced off her shoulder. She flinched with a curse, grabbing her arm.

"I warned you! I said to go away!" The sorcerer was staring at his feet, but his hand was stretched out towards Grace. Ford struggled, trying to tear at the tentacles that gripped him, but each thrash made them curl tighter around his limbs until he could barely breathe.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me." Grace waved her knife in the air, but she had the completely wrong grip on it, so it looked less like she was going to stab someone and more like she might accidentally put out an eye. "This can't be worth it. Can't you just use Tinder like everyone else?"

The sweat glistened on the sorcerer's face. He still didn't look up at Grace, but he snarled at his feet. "You don't understand! You could never understand!"

"Why? Because I can't possibly have had dating problems before?"

The sorcerer kept staring resentfully at his feet. Stan and the anime girl were wrestling, shoving each other into walls. Ford didn't think the man seemed all that concerned by his 'girlfriend' getting punched in the face, considering how in love he was.

"It's not the same for you," the man said. "You could get anyone you wanted. No man would ever say no."

Grace's laugh was loud and sharp, like he was just a creature so pathetic and sad that he could only be funny. The sorcerer shrunk in on himself, but he still didn't look at her face, and he still didn't move that threatening hand.

"Getting rejected is a part of life. It's a part of  _all_  of our lives. You just don't notice because you can't look past your stupid nose."

Ford tried to peel a tentacle off of his arm, but it wrapped around his fingers, squeezing until his hand numbed.

"If you can't handle being rejected, then you're not ready to date."

"I can handle it!" The man backed up, still shrinking, like maybe he could fold himself out of existence. "But I don't want to anymore! What's the point of dealing with real women if they're always too stuck up to date me?"

"If you can't find one person in a whole half of the population that will date you, the issue is you, not women."

The man made a choking noise, so pathetic and small that even Ford had a flash of sympathy. Then his fingers started turning purple in the tentacles' grip and the sympathy was gone.

"Don't be sad about it. You can change yourself. If the issue really was everyone else, there'd be nothing you can do." Grace gestured with her knife, accidentally swiping the tentacle that was wrapped around Ford's hand. It recoiled into itself, releasing his fingers in an explosion of pricking pins and needles. "I'm telling you that you're not hopeless, but you have to put in effort to improve. Then you have to suck it up when people reject you. It'll be much better than accidentally destroying the world for a fake woman, trust me."

With a choked noise, the sorcerer turned away, folded nearly in half as he drew his hands in defensively. "You don't know what it's like."

"Don't be like that. I'm giving you good advice." Grace inched forward, reaching out to pat his back. He flinched, but he didn't move away. "Yeah, it's hard to put yourself out there, but it's worth it. It's just up to you to make it worth it."

She slid her arms around his shoulders. Ford stared, his newly freed fingers curling into a fist at the flash of ugly jealousy in his gut.

Then she put him in a headlock.

The sorcerer's choking noises became a lot less sad, but also a lot more frequent. Ford shot a look to Stan and the anime girl's fight. Did she notice? But no, Stanley had slammed the girl into the wall, cracking more tiles, and the magic on the walls was shaking like jello. The sorcerer jerked and clawed at Grace's grip, but she kept a tight hold, never faltering until he went limp in her arms.

"Could someone help me over here?" Stan said right before the girl punched him in the face. Blood sprayed from his nose, speckling the wall and floor.

"Just keep her busy!" Ford tried to peel a tentacle off his arm, but another grabbed his hand again. Grace dropped the unconscious sorcerer, taking her knife again and approaching the tentacles. "No! Focus on destroying the spell! That's all that matters right now!"

The girl threw Stan to the ground, her face and hands smeared with blood. She turned towards Grace. She spotted the body on the ground.

"Fred-chan!" When the girl looked at Grace, it looked almost like she had no pupils. "What did you do to him? You bitch!"

The girl slammed forward. It was like watching a bull. Grace only just ducked out of the way before the girl slammed into the wall, shattering the tiles and breaking to the plaster. Ford yelled--he didn't know what he yelled, but he yelled.

The lights flickered. The world was shaking. Grace stumbled for the gun on the floor, but the ground slid from under her feet. She fell on her face just in time for the anime girl to emerge from the gaping hole in the wall, bending down for another charge.

"Run!" Ford thrashed against the tentacles, and they were tightening again, reaching for his throat, and he couldn't  _help—_  

Grace stumbled to her feet and sprinted across the room. Stan staggered for the gun. The anime girl charged again.

Grace reached the one untouched wall in the bathroom. The anime girl was a breath behind her.

Grace dove for the floor. The girl missed her by a hair.

The girl slammed through the wall.

Shards of tile scattered. The world screamed. The walls melted. A thousand voices howled at once until they sounded like hurricane winds, battering the world with their cries.

Ford hit the ground. There weren't any tentacles anymore. The anime girl was gone. They sat in a destroyed bathroom, water spraying from an exposed pipe in the wall and washing away the spattered blood and ceramic. The sorcerer lay in an unconscious pile on a soggy page covered with a blurring anime pen sketch. Stan sat with his gun, holding a hand to his broken nose. Grace lay on the ground, dusted with tile and now wet.

"Fuck," Grace said. She was shaking. Ford didn't bother checking all the sucker bruises on his arms before sitting next to her.

"That was amazing." He didn't know what was funny about what he said, but she gave him a hysterical laugh and he decided that was a good thing. "Are you hurt?"

She pushed herself up to her knees, rubbing her arms and legs. "One piece. Wow." She slumped against the wall. Water was spraying them both, making them well and truly soaked, but it was hard to care. "I think I'm going to nap for a week after this."

Stanley was the first one to get to his feet, cursing as he jerked his nose back into place. The sound was ugly and Ford shuddered, but Stan did it with a practiced air, only giving a couple short curses before shaking it off with watery eyes.

"Well, I'm gonna go get something to tie this weirdo up. Maybe one of those craft stalls have some extra scarves." Stan lumbered away, scrubbing the streaming blood from his chin. He was probably going to steal all the money lock boxes in the artist stalls, but Ford couldn't bring himself to care at the moment.

Ford and Grace were alone with an unconscious body. Ford looked at her sidelong.

"May I have your number?"

The request leapt out. The man on the floor was there because he couldn't handle real women, one way or the other. Ford wasn't going to be like him.

Grace let out another shaky laugh, but it was paired with a nod of her head. "Sure. Sure. Once my hands stop shaking." She smiled at him, and she flashed her teeth. "We have a card game to finish, don't we?"

Ford smiled, and for once, he didn't feel nervous talking to her. "Yes. We do."

She was still shaking. They were both wet.

Ford wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She leaned against him, and the shaking calmed.

They sat there for a long time, and not even the burst pipe could ruin it.


	5. Epilogue

“As your brother, I can't let you do this.” 

“I don't see how my relationship is any of your business, Stanley.” 

“You're not going to have a relationship if you do it.” 

“You're so dramatic. She said she wanted to see the weird creatures in Gravity Falls!” 

“No one--” Stan slammed his hand on Ford's newest journal, jabbing a finger at the sketch of Ford's newest find. “--I repeat, NO ONE wants to spend a date poking through animal turds!” 

“This is important work.” Ford snapped the book shut, rising from the kitchen table with a huff. He nearly backed up into the oven where their pancakes were still cooking, which would have ruined the dramatic flair he was going for. “It will teach us about eyebat diets.”

Stan threw his hands in the air, looking vaguely like he was trying to strangle something invisible. “Why can’t you go study unicorns with her or something? Chicks like unicorns!” 

“I am not inflicting unicorns on her!” Ford shuddered at the thought of high-pitched neighing about purity. 

“What’s this about unicorns?” Grace’s steps were heavy on her way down the rickety stairs, and the beads in her braids clicked together. Even before eight in the morning, she had already pulled on her work boots and coat in preparation for adventures. Ford had to take a moment to admire the view. 

“Nothing you have to worry about. I wouldn’t wish those creatures on anyone.” Ford turned towards the stove, where the pancakes were beginning to look thoroughly black, and he slid three on a plate. Offering it to Grace, he said brightly, “I was thinking we could examine eyebat guano instead.” 

Grace took the plate, and she had the tact to only frown at the charred pancakes for two seconds before kissing his cheek. “Under no circumstances.” 

Ford’s face fell as she sat down at the table to eat. “But—”

“I’m only here for four days. You can do the gross part of science after I go back home.” She sat down at the table, slathering the pancakes with syrup before taking a bite. “If we’re not going to chase around unicorns, are there fairies that need catching? Or werewolves that need wrangling?” 

Ford had to think for a second, drumming his fingers on his journal. “I think there’s a sea monster in the lake and I’ve been meaning to get scale samples.” 

“That sounds dangerous and only a little gross.” Grace gave him a thumbs up, which somehow was smeared with syrup already. “I’m in.” 

Stan made a noise, flopping in his seat and crossing his arms. “How did you luck out so hard, Ford?” His head lolled to the side as he squinted at Grace. “You got a sister?” 

“Not one I’m setting you up with, Mr. I-Shoplift-For-Fun.” Grace licked the errant syrup from her thumb. In Ford’s opinion, that was entirely too distracting and possibly deliberate. “But I got a cousin who just got out of prison for bank robbery.” 

Stan’s eyes lit up. “Can I have her number?” 

“She’ll want to look at your rap sheet first,” said Grace. 

“I keep one upstairs!” Stan leapt from the table and thundered away, rambling about felonies, fraud, and drug trafficking. 

“You would really set Stanley up with your cousin?” Ford was only half interested in the answer to that question. He was more interested in taking advantage of Stan’s absence by sitting down next to Grace and resting a hand on her knee. She shot him a grin, eyes glimmering. 

“Be nice to your brother. He’s a good guy.” She was still eating the pancakes when she leaned against him. Some syrup dripped on his pants, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. “Plus he’s the only one I’ve met who’d probably last more than a week with Anna.” 

She left her pancakes half-eaten on the table, turning her full attention on him. For a moment, her grin looked wicked. “Sea monster hunting sounds like the kind of thing that involves a lot of sitting in one place and doing nothing while you wait, right?” 

“I suppose,” Ford mused. “But setting up a trap and sensors will take a while, and then someone will always have to be on watch. Some of the best discoveries are made with patience.” 

“Yeah,” Grace said, nodding along with a strange look in her eye. “But I mean, we can do things other than just watch and wait for sensor readings, right?” 

“Of course! I’d never let you get bored.” Ford dragged his journal over to their side of the table, flipping it open to a page of theories. “We can spend our time hypothesizing about the creature based on its habitat.” 

Grace snorted, a laugh popping out of her chest. “You’re a genius.” 

Ford wasn’t so sure what was so funny, but she was smiling, so he would roll with it. “I know that,” he said, and she laughed again. 

Then Stanley came crashing down the stairs. “I have my rap sheet!” In his hands was a thick scroll, which he proudly unrolled until the bottom half plopped on the ground. “I keep a classy copy for the ladies.” 

Grace didn’t bother covering her mouth as she laughed, pulling out her cell phone. “I’ll text her a picture and tell you the verdict.” 

“Make sure to get my good side!” Stan said, grinning as he winked at the camera. He probably thought he looked rakish, sitting there with his scroll of misdeeds. Ford thought he looked like a hobo who stole a cheesy Greek-themed prop, but maybe some women were into that. 

“Got it!” Grace’s teeth were flashing with her smile. “I’ll tell you what she says.” 

“How could any woman resist a record this long?” Stan said, flourishing his hand around the scroll, and Ford couldn’t help but smile fondly before standing from the table. 

“Grace, we should get an early start if we want to set up a good trap. We’ll have to pick up all the supplies from my bunker.” 

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Her eyes sparkling, she slid her hand in his before tugging him to the door. “I’ll race you to the lake!” 

“First one there takes the notes!” 

Ford could practically feel his brother gagging at their cuteness as they both took off, but Grace was laughing, breathless besides him, and nothing was more important than that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed the story! Comments, critiques, and compliments are all loved.
> 
> This was written as a commission for comicgeekery at Tumblr. If you would like to commission a work from me as well, please visit my commissions page at themadqueenmab. tumblr. com / commissions.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed that! Comments, critiques, and compliments are all loved. 
> 
> This was written as a commission for comicgeekery at Tumblr. If you would like to commission a work from me as well, please visit my commissions page at themadqueenmab. tumblr. com / commissions.


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